CNet: Hamas And Israel Same Diff

Varda Epstein

A third-generation-born Pittsburgher on her mother’s mother’s side, Varda moved to Israel 34 years ago and is a crazy political animal who spams people with right wing political articles on Facebook in between writing about education as the communications writer at Kars for Kids, raising her 12 children, and noshing constantly on fried food

Ahmed Jabari never saw the missile that killed him. As he drove past parked cars and empty intersections on a leafy street in Gaza City in November 2012, a drone circling high overhead took aim at the roof of his nondescript sedan and fired.

In the chaos that followed, little did anyone know that reducing Jabari and his car to a cloud of shrapnel and dust marked the beginning of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. Within hours, the Israel Defense Forces made sure hundreds of thousands of people found out.

No, no, CNet. Jabari’s death was not the opening salvo of Operation Pillar of Defense. That would be the 160 missiles he, Jabari, ordered shot into civilian Southern Israel over the previous 4 days. Not to mention the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and the hundreds of thousands of missiles shot into the civilian population of Israel from Gaza since Jabari came to power–the hundreds of thousands of missiles that have 1 million Israeli civilians living life to the tune of constant sirens, unable to work, living in bomb shelters, and shaking from PTSD.

A senior Hamas military leader whom Israel accused of involvement in several terror attacks, Jabari was a strategic target for the Israeli military in its eight-day air and ground offensive against Hamas’ Gaza stronghold.

No, no CNet. Jabari was not “accused” by Israel of involvement in terror attacks. Jabari was actually responsible–the architect–for all Hamas terror activity coming out of Gaza during the previous decade. Just like Osama bin Laden was responsible for the September 11 attacks on America. There ain’t no difference.

Before long, Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, responded with its own social media barrage.

“Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves),” the Al Qassam Brigades tweeted.

From this point forward, the world was given a couple of front-row tickets — each with a decidedly one-sided view — to watch as the conflict was live-tweeted between these bitter enemies.

“Each with a decidedly one-sided view?” Sure. One side (Israel) doesn’t think people should be killed for being Jewish. The other side, Hamas, does.

Tsk. Why can’t we all just get along??

“Bitter enemies,” you say?

Er. Right. The Jews sure do hate those terrorist Jew-killers while meanwhile, those terrorists sure do hate the Jews.

Funny how that works.

Ramping up

The IDF’s social media czar is a woman named Avital Leibovich. A sandy blonde with Romanesque facial features and an unmistakable Israeli accent, Leibovich is in charge of running a 35-person team to tweet, Facebook, blog, build apps, edit videos, snap Instagrams, and update Google+ posts for the Israeli military.

In comes the CZAR to RAMP things up with her Romanesque features and evil Israeli accent. Are you KIDDING me, CNet?

For more than 50 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in a near-continuous conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. Both sides in this struggle over the same piece of land claim the right to defend themselves. It’s a complicated story with multiple strands but there’s one common theme: both sides vie constantly for the world’s sympathy, and social media has become the latest tool they reach for.

Dude, you really need to cut out this moral equivalency crap. Israeli civilians have been targeted by terrorists, while the terrorists hide behind human shields. There is no equivalence between the deaths of Israeli civilians through missile attacks and that of nursery school children who die because Hamas launches missiles into civilian Israel from the roof of the nursery school building.

And no, it’s not complicated. The Arabs refused to accept partition. They attacked Israel in war after war and refused all overtures of peace. They want all of tiny Israel. And they want it Judenrein.

Meanwhile Israel wants to live in its indigenous homeland in peace.

Quite simple really.

Ever since Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, both the IDF and Hamas have continued to ramp up their social media presence and take stabs at each other virtually the same way they battle tit-for-tat on the ground. The IDF now probably has the biggest social media presence of any military worldwide. Compared with Israel’s level of technological sophistication, the much smaller Hamas is far more modest in its social media coverage.

Never, ever dear CNet, was this about tit-for-tat. It’s about Israeli Jews being attacked by Arab terrorists and about the need of Israel to defend its people from its personal bin Laden(s).

The same day that the Israeli airstrike killed Jabari, the IDF uploaded three other videos to YouTube. Two of the videos were aerial black-and-white recordings revealing what it said were Hamas rocket sites. The final video, titled “How Does the IDF Minimize Harm to Palestinian Civilians in Gaza?”, showed an animation with a voice-over saying, “Despite the fact that Hamas operates from civilian areas, the IDF has consistently taken measures to minimize casualties to innocent bystanders.”

This is not about two kids in the sandbox making accusations. Israel doesn’t just claim those recordings are Hamas rocket sites. They are actual Hamas rocket sites. They are the gift that keeps on giving, over 15,000 missiles shot into Israel by Hamas, since Disengagement when Israel threw 8600 Jews out of their homes in Gaza, and handed over the area, unilaterally to the Arabs, for the sake of peace.

Note the caption on this photo, which shows the devastation in Gaza wrought through the response to unprovoked terror and not the devastation nor the babies without parents in Southern Israel, the victims of that terror.

No, no CNet. It’s not that wars are always messy and that the IDF is trying to justify its response to terror, it’s that a response to terror IS justified. Always. In every case.

Just as it was justified in the case of the assassination of Osama bin Laden for what HE did to American civilians in the Twin Towers.

CNet wants to play a numbers game? More Arabs were killed than Jews? That’s because JEWS don’t use human shields.

CNet is all up in arms about Jabari getting killed? What? Did they expect Israel to invite Ahmad Jabari to become the next Werhner von Braun so he could build Israel a space program or perhaps the next Disneyland in the heart of Tel Aviv?

All I want to do is get to my work and write about education at Kars4Kids. But this stuff just flies at me and my people so thick and fast, it’s endless. It never lets up.

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